Frank heckenbach wrote:
samiam@moorecad.com wrote:
P5 is a much better basis for a compiler front end, being 40 years old, very well documented, and completely ISO 7185 compliant (not a subset), and completely free of copyright or license encumberments.
Where is the copyright/license/public domain statement from its authors? I didn't find them in p5.zip from your web site. Note that "no copyright notice" doesn't mean "no copyright", but in fact the opposite "all rights reserved" is the default. Like it or not, that's the legal situation.
Only since the Berne convention was adopted. Pascal-P predates the Berne convention (in the USA, I guess it depends on where and which treaty you are talking about, Berne dates back to 1886)[1], it was written in 1972. It was also openly distributed to anyone that asked for it. Steve Pemberton published it without problems (or agreement with the original authors) in his book, and made it available on his web site, again without restrictions (and I asked the author about it personally).
You could also ask Wirth about it, but I don't suppose it would make a difference, since he didn't personally write it, his students did.
Neither the old nor the new united states copyright laws specifically stated what the exact meaning of public domain was. The former law simply stated that copyright didn't apply by default, but the berne convention says it does. In any case, the courts have weighed in on the subject, and ruled time after time that works given out freely and freely published loose any copyright status. In fact, I have yet to see a single example of a work that was freely given out by the author, but later retracted and successfully sued over (note patents are a completely different subject).
However, its not really my office to talk you into anything here, just point out possibilities.
Scott Moore
Berne convention:
[1] This Convention shall apply to all works which, at the moment of its coming into force, have not yet fallen into the public domain in the country of origin through the expiry of the term of protection.
US "Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988"
Sec. 12. Works in the public domain.
Title 17, United States Code, as amended by this Act, does not provide copyright protection for any work that is in the public domain in the United States.
samiam@moorecad.com wrote:
Only since the Berne convention was adopted. Pascal-P predates the Berne convention (in the USA, I guess it depends on where and which treaty you are talking about, Berne dates back to 1886)[1], it was written in 1972. It was also openly distributed to anyone that asked for it. Steve Pemberton published it without problems (or agreement with the original authors) in his book, and made it available on his web site, again without restrictions (and I asked the author about it personally).
AFAIK, Wirth went back to Switzerland in 1968, i.e. before it was written, where the Berne convention was already in force since 1886.
You could also ask Wirth about it, but I don't suppose it would make a difference, since he didn't personally write it, his students did.
This adds to the complication if we don't even know who the authors are. Just hypothetically, suppose one of them now works for Borland, Microsoft or another such company, and they later decide to take an opportunity to crush competition (if they ever see it as such), or just for a PR stunt to display free software authors as "pirates" (not unheard of, see the SCO debacle and other indicents).
Berne convention:
[1] This Convention shall apply to all works which, at the moment of its coming into force, have not yet fallen into the public domain in the country of origin through the expiry of the term of protection.
I guess a lawyer might interpret it so that, because it did not fall into the public domain *through the expiry of the term of protection*, it does apply.
Of course, I'm no lawyer, but I'd caution against using it as the base for any free software project without a clear (non-)copyright notice.
Frank
Frank Heckenbach wrote:
This adds to the complication if we don't even know who the authors are. Just hypothetically, suppose one of them now works for Borland, Microsoft or another such company, and they later decide to take an opportunity to crush competition (if they ever see it as such), or just for a PR stunt to display free software authors as "pirates" (not unheard of, see the SCO debacle and other indicents)
With all due respect, no. A work openly and widely distributed with full consent and knowledge of the authors, free of restriction, constitutes public domain. The only precedent in the courts for a work being the basis of a suit after it was freely distributed were where the author did not consent or did not know. For an author to go to court and try the argument that he/she changed his/her mind and now wants the rights back, is legally ridiculous and has never happened.
The SCO incident involved code that SCO claimed was copied from software they never gave permission to copy, and did not freely distribute. In fact, SCO claimed that IBM had appropriated the code whose access was given to them with restrictions and turned over to Linux developers. They lost. The court ruled that SCO had no such copyrights, but that they were owned by Novell, which declined to back the suit. Nowhere was any material widely and freely released involved.
As proof of what constitutes public domain, there is the Berne convention itself, the text of which is freely distributed, without any sort of notification of its' status as a public domain work. If the Berne convention did not consider its own text to be public domain, then how would anyone know what is in it?
My late friend and lawyer advised me on the matter, and confirmed that all that is required to be considered a public domain work is that a document has been distributed with the authors knowledge (not even consent) without charge or restriction. Any case before the court would turn around the fact of whether or not the author knew it was being distributed, not even if he/she consented, i.e., knowingly doing nothing about its distribution also constitutes public domain.
Pascal-P meets all the requirements of public domain. The authors, who were not paid for the work, released it without pay or restriction, and with their consent and full knowledge. Further, almost 40 years of precedence exists where the code was distributed over and over again without complaint from the authors. The reason the original code bore no such notice is that it was written in a time when the authors saw no need for such a note.
Having text within the work does not improve this situation. Any claim or statement on the text could have been faked, or demanded at gunpoint, etc., if you want to be very technical. A court would not absolve you of guilt if you read a release of rights on a document that was not true, any more than it would hold you innocent of theft charges from breaking and entering a house if someone had placed a "free stuff" sign on the door.
Again, with due respect, none of this is the issue with respect to GNU and GPC. GNU wishes to produce software that cannot be legally used for paid work, or the basis for paid work. I respect that. I would agree that passing any software to the GNU group that has been derived in any way, shape or form from public domain work would probably be politically impossible. GNU does not want PD software or to support it, they wish software restricted from commercial use. I respect authors rights completely. If the authors wish the user to jump on one leg while using the software, I support that (I doubt its legality, but that is another matter).
However, the status of P5 as public domain does not restrict its being covered by the GPL (indeed, public domain gives no restrictions whatever). The only issue vs. the GPL is that anyone could use the public domain parts of the code without falling under GPL restrictions. Indeed, they could simply get the code elsewhere and avoid even visiting a GNU distribution point.
The GPL would cover only the changes in the code. However, during the adaption of the code to GPC purposes, it would be changed in such detail as to be useless outside of its GPL covered sections. In any case, there would be little incentive, since the entirety of the non-GPL code could be found elsewhere.
Scott Moore
Scott Moore wrote:
Frank Heckenbach wrote:
This adds to the complication if we don't even know who the authors are. Just hypothetically, suppose one of them now works for Borland, Microsoft or another such company, and they later decide to take an opportunity to crush competition (if they ever see it as such), or just for a PR stunt to display free software authors as "pirates" (not unheard of, see the SCO debacle and other indicents)
With all due respect, no. A work openly and widely distributed with full consent and knowledge of the authors, free of restriction, constitutes public domain. The only precedent in the courts for a work being the basis of a suit after it was freely distributed were where the author did not consent or did not know. For an author to go to court and try the argument that he/she changed his/her mind and now wants the rights back, is legally ridiculous and has never happened.
The SCO incident involved code that SCO claimed was copied from software they never gave permission to copy, and did not freely distribute.
I wasn't referring to the specifics of the SCO case, just using it as an example that some companies will take any means, even if their case is absurd, and even after they've repeatedly lost in court before. Or in other words: Who's going to pay the lawyers if someone does decide to sue, even if their case has no merit? All they have to achieve is that the case isn't rejected beforehand, for which a somewhat unclear copyright situation might suffice, and the "victim" will be faced with enormous legal bills.
My late friend and lawyer advised me on the matter, and confirmed that all that is required to be considered a public domain work is that a document has been distributed with the authors knowledge (not even consent) without charge or restriction.
I don't think that's true as stated. Your own web site is distributed (to any web browser that requests it) without charge and without restrictions (at least I didn't find any on the pages I checked). So do you hold your web site (at least those pages that don't state otherwise) to be in the public domain? (Meaning that anybody can do anything with it, such as incorporating parts of it into their own web sites, without mentioning the source.)
We had a similar discussion in 2003, and I hope you don't mind me quoting from it. You wrote (after researching about copyright law a bit):
: The bad news is the Berne convention completely trashed the good : idea in the USA law concerning public domain. Prior to Berne, the : USA law clearly stipulated that publishing a work without a : copyright notice was effectively placement in public domain. After : Berne, a work can be published, placed on the web, and still retain : copyright. : : [...] : : B. Putting a statement on all my public domain works (online) is : probally necessary, such as "these works are in public domain" [...]
So unless you changed your views, I think we can agree that the situation under Berne is not nice (I'd also prefer otherwise), but we have to live with it (or start a revolution).
The reason the original code bore no such notice is that it was written in a time when the authors saw no need for such a note.
That's probably true, but unintented consequences can occur -- assuming it happened under Berne (which would be case if it was written, even partly, in Switzerland).
Having text within the work does not improve this situation. Any claim or statement on the text could have been faked, or demanded at gunpoint, etc., if you want to be very technical. A court would not absolve you of guilt if you read a release of rights on a document that was not true, any more than it would hold you innocent of theft charges from breaking and entering a house if someone had placed a "free stuff" sign on the door.
We should probably ask a lawyer about this, but I suppose it's something to do with burden of proof etc. A written contract signed at gunpoint in invalid, too, but that doesn't mean that all written contracts are dubious and people would stop demanding signatures in general.
Again, with due respect, none of this is the issue with respect to GNU and GPC. GNU wishes to produce software that cannot be legally used for paid work, or the basis for paid work.
Sorry, that's absolutely untrue (and we had this discussion before).
- See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
- You might have heard of a company called Red Hat and others ...
- As I stated before, most of my development work in GPC *was* paid, and the resulting compiler was *used* for paid work. Also recent work I did (not GPC related) was paid and GPL'd.
- Others have written in this thread about their paid work using GPC (e.g. Pascal Viandier, Martin Liddle) or Linux (Steven D'Aprano).
If you reject all of these examples (and there are more), you must deny my existence because what I do is impossible then. I'm getting used to it (Robert Hodges did so in this thread as I use Linux outside of academia and the entertinment industry), but as a ghost I'd have to stop talking with mortals. ;-)
I would agree that passing any software to the GNU group that has been derived in any way, shape or form from public domain work would probably be politically impossible.
Not at all, because of the following:
However, the status of P5 as public domain does not restrict its being covered by the GPL (indeed, public domain gives no restrictions whatever). The only issue vs. the GPL is that anyone could use the public domain parts of the code without falling under GPL restrictions. Indeed, they could simply get the code elsewhere and avoid even visiting a GNU distribution point.
The GPL would cover only the changes in the code. However, during the adaption of the code to GPC purposes, it would be changed in such detail as to be useless outside of its GPL covered sections. In any case, there would be little incentive, since the entirety of the non-GPL code could be found elsewhere.
Sure (provided the PD status is clear, which is my point above).
The FSF has always stated that the GPL only covers the changes made under it. This applies when incorporating PD work as well as work released under a GPC compatible license (e.g., the revised BSD license). The, say, BSD licensed part of the work can be used under its original license (whether it's extracted from a GPL package where possible, or obtained elsewhere, which is just a technical detail -- sure, usually it's easier to get it from elsewhere, but even if other sources disappeared, as long as the original work can be clearly separated, it keeps it license).
Of course, the FSF prefers GPL to PD, and therefore generally requires GNU projects to use the GPL, but for 3rd party code that is incorporated where they have no say over the license, any GPL compatible license or PD is fine.
Note: I'm not saying using P5 is likely to get one sued, but even a very remote possibility can be disastrous, considering the enormous legal costs one has to afford (especially in the USA), even if one wins in the end.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.
Frank
On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 03:41:09 pm Scott Moore wrote:
With all due respect, no. A work openly and widely distributed with full consent and knowledge of the authors, free of restriction, constitutes public domain.
You don't actually know what Public Domain means, do you? PD does not mean "free to distribute", or "openly distributed". It means there is no longer any copyright on the work. See, for example, the Creative Commons movement, which allows authors to publish works for free distribution *without* giving up copyright.
The GPL only works because of copyright. If giving away a work for free put it into the public domain, the GPL would be meaningless. See this article for an explanation of how the GPL works:
http://lwn.net/Articles/61292/
The laws governing what is and isn't in the public domain differs from country to country. Talking about what is in the PD without specifying which country is like talking about the average wage for a worker without mentioning what country and profession you are talking about.
See, for example:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_FAQ http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_How-To
for discussions on the complexity of deciding what's in the public domain and what isn't, by people who make their living at this, and risk extremely large penalties if they get it wrong.
The only precedent in the courts for a work being the basis of a suit after it was freely distributed were where the author did not consent or did not know. For an author to go to court and try the argument that he/she changed his/her mind and now wants the rights back, is legally ridiculous and has never happened.
If the author explicitly places their work in the public domain (which isn't even possible under some legal jurisdictions), then no, they probably can't get it back. But if an author merely allows redistribution, without granting an explicit licence, what happens when the author passes on and his or her heirs become owners of the copyright? What guarantee do you have that they will continue turning a blind eye to redistribution and derivative works?
As proof of what constitutes public domain, there is the Berne convention itself, the text of which is freely distributed, without any sort of notification of its' status as a public domain work. If the Berne convention did not consider its own text to be public domain, then how would anyone know what is in it?
That's not even wrong.
I can assure you that many countries routinely place their laws and treaties under copyright, e.g.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Copyright
My late friend and lawyer advised me on the matter, and confirmed that all that is required to be considered a public domain work is that a document has been distributed with the authors knowledge (not even consent) without charge or restriction. Any case before the court would turn around the fact of whether or not the author knew it was being distributed, not even if he/she consented, i.e., knowingly doing nothing about its distribution also constitutes public domain.
Either you have misunderstood your late friend, or he wasn't an intellectual property lawyer and consequently did not know what he was talking about. The idea that something enters the public domain because the author knows (not even consents to, but merely *knows*) that somebody else is giving away copies is so ridiculously foolish that I don't know where to even begin.
Possibly you are confusing copyright with trademarks, where a trademark holder must actively defend the mark or else lose the rights to it. There is nothing analogous in copyright law. Believe me, George Lucas hasn't lost the copyright to the Star Wars franchise because he knows about the "Turkish Star Wars" derivative work.
[...]
GNU wishes to produce software that cannot be legally used for paid work, or the basis for paid work.
That statement is so patently ridiculous that you have lost all credibility with me.
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Frank Heckenbach -
samiam＠moorecad.com -
Scott Moore
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Steven D'Aprano